hazard pay

I usually call the kid ‘baby as in ‘baby and I are blowing bubbles’ or ‘baby and I had this for lunch’ or ‘baby and I are going to the Y.’ But, it seems, that baby now burps and smells like a pre-teen boy. I am mourning this, I am. I mean, seriously, what a rude friggin-awakening. I knew it was coming. I just thought it would come when he was actually a pre-teen boy. I think I’ll call him kid now.

Kid was especially naughty this morning. In the space of two hours, he discovered and did the following…

1. Figured out how to open the back door and let himself out twice. I was on him like a mama is but, seriously, now I have to deadbolt us in at all times.

2. Figured out how to open the child safety knobs on the stove and let some great pilot light gas out in the moment it took me to open the refrigerator to get his milk. I turned around and ALL FIVE KNOBS WERE OPEN. A skill he did not have three seconds before.

3. Figured out how to open our child-locked television cabinet (Dad, your MASH season 1 DVD that you loaned me because you really wanted me to remember what all the hype was about Radar and company? It will never quite be the same.) and the child-locked medicine cabinet.

4. Figured out how to crawl over the side of our garden tub (the kid is crazy tall for his age) and promptly went for my razor, of course.

Fortunately, I follow this child around like it is my job (because, you know, well, it is) so he stays out of the danger that he is just on the cusp of discovering at all turns, but, seriously, seriously? I feel like I deserve not just pay, but hazard pay.

Don’t let that sweet face up there fool you. This one, this one is trouble.

In a Bookstore Near You

What does it mean to be beautiful in America? For years, pop culture has insisted that beautiful women are tall, thin, and blonde. So what do you do if your mirror reflects olive skin, raven hair, and a short build?
Hijas Americanas: Beauty, Body Image, and Growing Up Latina offers a provocative account of the struggles and triumphs of Latina forced to reconcile these conflicting realities. Rosie Molinary combines her own experience with the voices of hundreds of Latinas who grew up in the US navigating issues of gender, image, and sexuality. This empathetic ethnography exemplifies the ways in which our experiences are both profoundly individualistic and comfortingly universal.